I'd call it a win if Plextor does better with less DOA units and better customer support. Every OCZ I've bought has required a firmware update, which are hard to do at best to start with. And I've just had too many OCZ failed drives. Sometimes second place is better, and in this case it might very well be so.Reply

Amen to that, brother. OCZ drives are released in an alpha/beta state, and their support is simply atrocious. I'd far rather pay a little more and deal with a reputable company than go through the nightmare that is 'working' with OCZ.Reply

:) ... he probably didn't get that "piss off troll" translates to "over the past years several large EU retailers have released reliability reports and AMD, in the graphics department, did some of the most reliable cards, Nv... not so much. Cudos to AMD's partners! RIP BFG!Reply

The Pro version should be the only version Plextor releases IMO and they should be priced as the base model -which they are. The non-Pro versions are basically models without proper firmware to facilitate best performance. The base models are just under-achievers used to justify higher prices for the Pro models. Not cool IMO.

BTW the minute theoretical gains do not make any substantial gains in typical operation so just buy whatever is on sale if you're ready to jump in a be an unpaid SSD beta tester as this is still very "immature tech" as Anand has stated.Reply

Irrelevant. You'll get many years out of any SSD, enough for any consumer. The people who buy these sort of performance SSD's usually upgrade again within 2 or 3 years anyway. I upgrade every 18 months.Reply

Actually SSD tech is very IMMATURE TECH and this is proven weekly with the need for frequent firmware updates, compatibility and reliability issues, lost data, lost drive capacity, frequent RMAs, missing TRIM function, etc.

Just because half-baked SSDs have been sold for a number of years doesn't mean that the tech is sorted, reliable or standardised. In fact the tech changes almost monthly and has proven to be quite unreliable/incompatible.

Anand himself stated about a year ago that SSD tech was "immature" and that statement is still true today. He suggested back then to wait 6-12 months from the time an SSD was released to see how it pans out.

Unfortunately the same advice is still appropriate today - to wait 6-12 months as the SSD makers are rushing half-baked crap to market for undeserved profits instead of conducting thorough validation of their products. It doesn't matter what the brand, they are all shipping half-baked SSD products in one form or another and consumers have no means to know what to expect from any given product.Reply

Yeah... what a bunch of bull. Please show me any reputable source showing that late-model SSDs have failure/return rates higher than any other electronic good. You're behind the times; SSDs have gotten cheaper, and the issues have mostly been sorted. The major issues were pretty much isolated to Sandforce drives anyway.

No, SSDs aren't perfect, but nothing is. HDDs go bad, have issues, are DoA as well, just like any consumer electronic. Your propoganda aimed at scaring people away from SSDs is disingenuous at best.Reply

I have been using SSD extensively for the last two years - and (knock on wood) none of them has failed me yet. (4 x Intel X25V, 2 x Samsung 470, 2 x Samsung 830, Kingston V200+, Intel X18M, just to name a few - I don't remember the others exactly).

They work in desktop computers, workstations and notebooks, and even in my office server. These machines FLY.

Oh, and to mention, almost all of these were bought, because some HDD has started producing bad sectors(mostly within the warranty period, but I did not want another slow and crappy product). Reply

As an owner of a Plextor M3 256GB drive (no S or P - this was made before then) I suffer none of the issues you commented about. I have never touched the firmware, it has been perfectly reliable, lost no data, and has yet to make me even consider an RMA. This is why people like me are willing to pay more for a quality product.

When you talk about the immature drives, remember to differentiate a bit. The CHEAP drives are immature. Intel, Samsung, and Plextor all make top notch drives that easily rival the die hard 15K SCSI drives.Reply

I posted the above matters to OCZ forum and got no solution from them after many email in and out in a week time. They want me to write an email to HP for help. They even deleted my reply and make the post like I did not reply their request or reply their mail. Furthermore, they blocked my post. They wanted me to send them a personal email instead of on the public forum.

"It's still a drive from OCZ, a company that has repeatedly and blatantly used its customer base as unpaid beta testers, and lambasted them when they dared to complain about it. No thank you. The fastest drive in the world is of no use to me if it's causing my computer to BSOD constantly. I'll be spending my money and that of my many clients on drives with proven track records for reliability and excellent customer service, both sadly lacking in OCZ products."

I will walk away from this OCZ unreliable SSD. Luckily I am able to return the drives and asked for refund instead of following their steps to do the beta tester.

I'm new here and not much of an expert in this stuff!Just a silly question but, since I would buy one SSD tomorrow for my Tecra R80 laptop (and I'm for the M3Pro): what to expect from the 512 GB version of the M3Pro (speed, power consumption, etc) when compared to the little brother (256 GB) ?

Small sequential transfers in ATTO seem to be mediocre on this drive. With just a small bit of the 256MB RAM used for read-ahead that could be fixed for reads. For small sequential writes 128-256KB of the RAM used for "unprotected" buffering (could be safe with caps, not necessarily supercaps) could put the write speed for all smaller transfer sizes close to the 340MB/s mark seen in 128KB seq write IOmeter test.Reply